So I’ve seen the TP-Link and GL.inet travel routers, and it looks like some of the GLs are/were built to run wrt firmwares. Stock TP firmwares have been pretty full features in my experience. I really want USB-C power. The GL wireguard support looks useful too, but it looks like their newer stuff is proprietary? Another want, not need, is 5 GHz band.
Does anyone have a favorite model or another board that can be flashed?
What’s the usage scenario for a portable router? I’ve never really understood the benefits of one.
Disclaimer: I hate cruises and the entire industry, but ended up getting roped into a few before COVID by weird family dynamics.
I found a portable router to be pretty handy on cruise ships. The only Internet available is through the ship’s WiFi, and the Internet package I had limited connectivity to a single connected device per cabin. The travel router would be the single MAC and allow all our devices to connect. I was also able to share with family in the next cabin over.
A few months ago I stayed in a hotel for about a week and I couldn’t get my Nintendo Switch to connect through their Wi-Fi. My Switch also doesn’t work on my phone’s hotspot for some reason, even though other devices connect and work fine. Anyway, that scenario would’ve been nice for a travel router, but I didn’t bring it with me on that trip.
This actually is maybe the most legitimate usage of a travel router that I’ve ever heard.
If I ever find myself planning to go on a cruise (highly unlikely), I’ll be purchasing a travel router.
I just think they’re neat!
The wireguard tunnel is what I’m most interested in. Having that, and then my pihole, be handed out via DHCP is worth $50. More than that is a harder sell.
I just have wireguard setup on my different systems (phone, laptop, tablet, etc.). Just flip it on/off as needed…
Honestly, I guess I loath the idea of carrying another electronic device…
I could understand them a decade or more ago when not every phone was Hotspot ready, but now days I’d just use PDANet
I use a gl.inet Mango for work. I’m a field tech for industrial machines, I connect the router to the machine’s LAN (if it doesn’t have a switch, the two ports on the Mango come in handy, I just insert it in an existing connection) and I have wireless to the PLCs, allowing me to walk around the installation to check things with my laptop.
Bonus point for the wifi client that allows me to connect to a customer’s wifi or my phone’s hotspot and also have internet on my laptop for mails, etc.
The other day I used it to connect to three different subnets on three machines, one on one port, and two on the other with a switch, again with wifi client for internet.
That’s a cleaver solution to a problem that brings lots of quality of life benefits to your job. Kudos!